


Selfish Prayers

by TrulyCertain



Series: Shield Raised [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: ...what?, M/M, but when i do i write 3k, i don't always write sex, it's a bunch of sex that's not really about sex, not safe for work at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 03:49:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15134471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyCertain/pseuds/TrulyCertain
Summary: The problem is this: he’s always fallen in love too easily, been too much. And this needs to stop, now, before he… does. Fall, that is.A character study through sex. Because why not.





	Selfish Prayers

Sex is not love. Dorian’s known that since his parents’ awkward yet matter-of-fact talks about “marital duties”; since the first time he gathered his clothes and stumbled from an enchanter’s quarters feeling used and faintly soiled and most of all, heartbroken. Since the first time he walked into a whorehouse with very simple and not at all honourable intentions.

And yet, there’s… this, an old problem that hasn’t reared its head in some time. He doubted it ever would again. Frankly, he could deal with wanting to get his hands down their noble Herald’s trousers if he didn’t also want to stay afterwards, to have endless, meandering conversations with him, to show him Minrathous. To kiss him in the daylight. That’s what’s frightening, and dangerous.

The problem is this: he’s always fallen in love too easily, been too much. And this needs to stop, now, before he… does. Fall, that is.

 

 

It hasn’t been a lack of interest that’s stopped him taking things to their logical conclusion. Quite the opposite.

He’d only been in Haven a few weeks before he dreamt of one of their usual reading and discussion sessions in the quiet room leading to the cells. Not unusual, such a dream; they’d spent plenty of time discussing arcane theory, or the Imperium, or making small talk. They’d even had a few drinks together. It only made sense that a regular part of his routine should appear in his unconscious as well.

Only this time, he closed the book in Gal’s hands and put it aside. He remembers leaning in, and his unconscious mind vaguely speculating on the taste of Gal’s mouth. The rest was rather a blur – clothes barely seemed to be an issue, and certainly, no-one seemed to be wearing armour – but he knows it ended with him enthusiastically, almost lovingly sucking the Herald of Andraste off right on those very stairs, Gal spreadeagled and delighted underneath him.

That he could take – it’s not as if there’s anything wrong with the odd blowjob between friends, after all, and such dreams don’t necessarily mean anything; he had a startlingly filthy one about the Archon, once, and he still has no interest in the man or his ridiculous hat – but it was the moments afterwards…

It was the way Gal didn’t shove him aside and make excuses but smiled at him, and stroked his hair out of his face. And then pulled him up to kiss him, softly but deeply, uncaring of the taste.  The way he held on to him, like a man who was going to  _stay._

Even then, he’d suspected there was something gentle underneath the glaring and the armour. And that gentleness was  _terrifying._

 

 

He thinks it’s the pause that morning that undoes him.

He leans to get a book and then changes his mind, gently runs a hand under Gal’s chin as he passes, and smiles before he can pretend otherwise. Maker, he’s becoming a sap. The way Gal looks at him in surprise and then, eyes closing, tilts his head and presses into Dorian’s palm, as if to feel more of it… Before visibly tensing, opening his mouth and closing it again just as swiftly, of course, because Gal and talking are rarely friends.

“What?” Dorian asks, amused.

Gal shakes his head, with that look of self-recrimination that makes Dorian think of the frightened, closed-off man at Haven. Perhaps not so amusing after all, then.

“No, tell me.” Dorian’s voice softens then, and he moves to catch Gal’s eye. “Please.”

Gal swallows, still seeming to debate it, and then says quietly, “I swear no-one touches me.” At Dorian’s frown, the way Dorian pointedly strokes a thumb over his chin, he adds, “You’re the only one. Like they’re scared, or they’re…” He pauses, tenses again, and goes very still, his face blank  - which for Gal, means he’s bodily cringing at whatever thought has gone through his head. “Reverent.”

“There are plenty of reasons to be that,” Dorian says, with the hint of a laugh, “and only some of them are to do with the mark on your hand.”

That pleased surprise flits across Gal’s face again.

With it, Dorian can’t quite bring himself to take his hand away. He spreads his fingers to touch Gal’s cheek, watches the way Gal closes his eyes and breathes it in, and the thought he’s been trying to suppress for months creeps into his head again.  _I want to make you so happy. Let me make you happy._ _If just for a little while._ Even if it will hurt more, in the end.

Gal opens his eyes, and the sadness returns. “You… you don’t. You don’t touch me like I’ll burn you, or… like you’re afraid of tainting me.” He looks away and says, with the hint of a sneer that comes from utter despair, “Because who’d want to defile the Herald of Andraste?”

Dorian just grins through the ache in his chest, and presses closer. With a kiss to Gal’s jaw, he says softly, lowly, “I think you know the answer to that.” It comes out more roughly than he intended it to.

He feels Gal’s head turn, and Gal blinks at him, eyes rapidly darkening. Dorian waits for some amused reply, perhaps with a hint of embarrassment – and instead Gal kisses him, a hand to the back of his head to pull him closer. It feels… oddly grateful. It’s also deep and rather dirty, and he suddenly has to wonder who exactly was meant to be defiling who, here.

He can only be carried along by it, and let himself be kissed breathless. There’s that same gentleness and yet something more pointed as Gal presses closer, kisses him more deeply, surrounding him and asking for  _more, more,_ all hesitation gone. That slick slide and Gal’s white knuckles are a declaration of intent, a request as clear as any he’s heard, and it sends his blood rushing south. (Much like the rest of him, on a larger scale, he supposes. Hah.)

If the library were occupied, he might pull away and be sensible. But it isn’t, and he doesn’t.

He fists his hands in Gal’s shirt, stumbling backwards and taking Gal with him, and half-falls against the shelves. He doesn’t even pause, licking into Gal’s mouth, swallowing Gal’s sharp inhale and feeling Gal’s hips buck, just slightly, before Gal tries to pull the movement back.

He should step back, remember that the spymaster is probably still in the rookery,  _something_. Instead he wraps a leg around one of Gal’s, savouring taut muscle as he feels Gal struggling to keep still. Gal’s tensing, trembling at the feel of it. He responds to that by meeting Gal’s tongue with his own, giving one of the kisses that tends to imprint him on the memory like a brand, and giving a pointed thrust of his hips, not quite  _enough_  but good all the same. 

It drags a moan out of their noble Herald – quiet and hastily cut-off, but very much there. It also makes Gal give up on the whole “keeping still” enterprise, so it works.

Yes, they’re both going to have rather a problem when they have to be seen in public, Dorian reflects as he drags Gal closer, needing more of it all: strong arms, hot mouth, hardening cock, those low noises of pleasure he’s almost certainly going to hear all over again when he ends up in the Fade. Gal’s palms are on his back, desperately pulling him closer, still asking for more. Maker, this man.

They pant into each other’s mouths, riding the knife edge of wanting more friction and not wanting too much, lest… well. Too much of a good thing.

When he finally breaks away, it’s a combination of needing to breathe, his breeches getting painfully tight, and refusing to embarrass himself in a library. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, but he can hear murmurs from the gardens outside and doors opening, and one more minute and it could be a rather more  _public_ embarrassment. He’s had enough of those to last a lifetime. He tries not to think of being dragged out of an estate by his father’s guards with barely a moment to dress himself, still trying to get back to -

No. He blinks that away, not letting it intrude here, not letting it ruin this. But at least it’s solved the problem of trying not to come in his breeks like an awkward teenager. He lays his head against the shelves and laughs roughly at that thought, the two of them panting for breath in the silence.

He hears Gal’s laughter, too, and gives him a questioning look. Gal gives a pointed look backwards, and Dorian… ah.

Dorian realises both of his hands have somehow ended up on the Inquisitorial backside. He simply grins roguishly back, raises a brow and squeezes, slightly. He’s only human, after all, and he’s… rather fond. Then he kisses that spot he’d touched earlier when they’d started all this, lips to Gal’s jaw, resting there and smiling against stubbled skin. “I hope that answers your question,” he says quietly.

Gal pauses in surprise, and then says, “It does,” in a voice that’s still breathless and rough. He draws back, and then gives what from anyone else would be a stare. It’s some mix of startled and lustful.

Dorian realises that his hair is in some disarray, he’s breathless and flushed, and he probably looks… the first word that comes to mind is  _well-bedded._

Maker, he wants to be.

He lasts another two days before he ends up in Gal’s quarters with a proposition. He can do this. Everything else may be overly complicated and sometimes painful, but the body remembers. If he’s only going to do this once, it’s going to be the best  _once_ either of them has ever had.

Except his body doesn’t remember a man who touches him so constantly, so fascinatedly, who takes so much time over it. With others, he doesn’t remember taking one of those troublesome hands and pressing his mouth to it before he can stop himself, breathing in, savouring warm skin and white knuckles.

He doesn’t remember so much  _talking,_ or so much breathless laughter, in his previous assignations, either, especially when they end up in a half-stumble towards the bed, a  _more, now_ thing that’s barely sensible and nearly ends up with Gal tripping over his own boots.

He thought he knew what he was doing. But he’s not sure he can survive Gal looking at him like the world declared the wrong one of them holy.

 

 

“All right?”

“Fine.”

“You always this quiet?”

“It’s… I don’t… it’s safer.”

“Door’s locked. Three stone walls between us and the great hall. Don’t have to be if you don’t want to be.”

“I know, I… I… Fuck _._ I can’t… I’m sure you didn’t come here to hear me – oh  _fuck_ – talk.”

“Talk to me, I want to hear you. Please, I…”

“What – I - What do you want me to say?”

“The truth?”

“…Come on, then, harder. I’m not going to break, come  _on_.”

“Dorian - “

“ _Venhedis_. I don’t think I can hold on, you’re – “

“Then don’t.”

“I –  _Amatus._ Gal, I – fuck,  _fuck, amatus_...”

 

 

Sex is not -

Well. It doesn’t need to be said when it’s already in his bones. He knows the rest. It’s an old mantra. It sits next to casting for magelights,  _you are not your father_ and the one decent recipe he knows.

 

 

He shuts the door behind them and says, “You know what you did.”

Gal says, flatly, “My job.”

“No, you nearly got yourself  _killed.”_ His voice is tight, and he tries to keep his calm. He’s failing.

“Someone had to protect you. All of you. That was – that was fucking close.” Gal runs a hand down his face. "I should’ve taken along someone else with a decent shield, or someone who could distract them. If Cassandra had to stay, then Blackwall - “

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

Gal pauses. “No?”

“You can’t just throw yourself into danger like you’re just some – some soldier - “

Gal’s eyes are stormy. “What, so their lives don’t matter?”

“You know I don’t mean that. It’s not…”

Gal glares at him and snaps, “I really thought they’d got you. You were out cold. You think it’s just  _me?”_

“That’s not the same!”

“Then what? Because of the fucking Anchor, I have to sit aside and watch you all get - ” For all the anger, something in Gal’s eyes is hollow. Hollow, and familiar. It’s frightening.

“ _This is not Redcliffe_.” He doesn’t mean to snarl it, but he’s stepping forwards and doing it before he can stop himself. “I got you out of there. Stop acting like you’re already  _dead.”_ And he kisses Gal, forces life and  _Don’t you dare leave_ _me_ into tattooed lips, breathes into them until Gal gasps against his mouth, and breathes back.

Gal kisses like a man who’s not dead but might well be dying, like a man afraid. There’s something desperate about it. Gal mouths at his throat, and then at his pulse, and then there’s a scrape of teeth.

If this were the Imperium, he’d be afraid of being marked. He knows he shouldn’t be revelling in it.  _Yes, yours,_ he thinks, the thought somehow making him harder.  

He pulls Gal closer and scrabbles at their trousers. His deft hands that are complimented when he casts, where are they now? He thinks he might be shaking, but all he can think is  _more_ and  _not enough_.

Gal’s just as bad, pressing him against the wall and shoving his robes aside with desperate hands. Dorian licks his palm and reaches downwards, and Gal’s not far behind.

They get their hands on each other, and Gal inhales, hips bucking so sharply it shifts them both – then looks at him with eyes that are a little wild, so dark there’s any blue left. No hiding, no Chantry blankness, no stoic wall to frighten their enemies. Real and alive, something no-one else gets to see.

Gal glances away, and Dorian reaches out a hand and brings that gaze back to his before getting back to work.

They don’t even make it to the bed. It’s a white-knuckled, desperate rut into each other’s fists, in the end, just moving against each other and trying to get closer.  

He savours the hot throb of Gal’s pulse in his neck and his cock, the stuttering slide of it all before they find a rhythm, the scrape of the wall against his back. It’s inelegant and it’s graceless and it’s utterly unbefitting of an Altus, or the Inquisitor they make statues of, and he half-laughs at the thought. It’s awkward and it’s filthy and he’s going to be bruised after this and they’re alive, dammit. They’re alive and it’s  _fantastic_.

They set a punishing pace. When Gal’s hands are doing most of the work, Dorian cups Gal’s face and kisses him again, barely stopping to breathe, and drags him closer. He grabs at broad shoulders and listens to ragged breathing and manhandles this Southern barbarian who looks at him like he’s something worth admiring.

It should be the same as those hurried things in back rooms. It isn’t. Those were hasty, yes, but they were loveless, and this – this –  _oh._

He doesn’t mean to come with that thought, but he does. He curses against Gal’s shoulder, pressing his face into long brown hair. It’s only a moment or two later when Gal exhales his name, and he feels the hot slickness of come on his skin.

He sags against the wall and stays there a moment, even though if he lets things dry this situation will become a lot more objectionable, listening to their breathing slowing.

At some point he realises that he’s laughing quietly, perhaps slightly hysterically, into Gal’s shirt. “At least I managed to get your trousers off,” he says.

Gal laughs ever so slightly at that, he feels it, and then says, “I’m sorry.”

He wonders when this became more of an embrace. “I know. So am I. Just… don’t be an imbecile?” His voice is too soft for there to be any sting in the words.

Another silent exhale of a laugh. “Promise me the same.”

“I swear on my birthright.” He can’t quite manage the grandiose tone when he’s still breathless and he’s probably a mess of come and marks.

“Then I’ll try not to get myself killed. And we need a bath.”

“Yes. Yes, we do. I don’t know if these robes will ever be the same again.”

 

 

It’s far too satisfying, time after time, finally watching all that careful Chantry control fall, making the pent-up, stoic soldier finally unwind. The way Gal seems to debate between staying still and reaching for him, the way that after a while Gal visibly has to fight not to buck and thrash in the sheets. He thinks, sometimes, during it all, that these times are possibly the most he’s ever heard Gal talk. And he also thinks that he’d do anything to hear more of that low, rough voice and the desperate words. More _gorgeous_ and  _please_ and  _never met anyone like you_ and  _Dorian…_ The way Gal says his name should either be a sin or a good whiskey.

He’d do this all day, if there wasn’t a world to save, for the joy in Gal’s eyes. And he can’t afford to think like that.

Even with all his training, all his careful willpower, this always manages to steal the breath from him. He’s white-knuckled, gasping, every breath a knife-edge of control, and really he should be terrified that someone can make him feel this way, but instead he revels in it. The taste of someone else’s skin, the feel of it, all the nonsense in his head gone and replaced by  _yes_  and the man he’s with _._ Being _this_ , and nothing else. Maker, this is so much simpler. So much better.

Worth coming south for. Maybe worth everything.

 

 

“Dorian.”

He looks up from a history of Ostwick’s ties with blood magic, and raises an eyebrow, because Gal is many things, but rarely  _hesitant_. “You’re looking at me oddly. What is it?”

Gal stares at the wall, seeming indecisive. Then he shakes his head.

Dorian puts the book aside, suddenly finding Gal of more interest, and crosses the room. He puts a hand under Gal’s jaw and gently raises his chin until their eyes meet. “There’s something you want to say. You’re very bad at hiding it.”

Gal swallows. “Some of the things you say, when we… They’re not always in Common.”

Horrifyingly, Dorian feels his cheeks heat. Maker, he doesn’t  _blush._  “Quite the question to spring on someone.”

“Not so odd to spring on the man I’m sleeping with,” Gal says quietly. “Especially when he keeps lapsing into Tevene.”

He lies, of course, because it’s safer that way. “I… Truthfully, I have no idea. I’m not usually in much state to pay attention.”

(Usually it’s some variation on a theme.  _Stay, please. I love you. Sweetheart, bastard,_ stay.)

 

 

Sex is not love. Sex is so much easier and less frightening than love.

 

 

“I love you,” he breathes in a rush as he comes, almost a sob against Gal’s skin, and he shakes with it.

He realises too late what he’s said. He looks away, not daring to meet Gal’s face, focusing on the bedsheets against his elbows and trying to make the enjoyable haze of a damn good fuck turn into decent, self-preserving panic.

Gal’s moving, getting into a slightly less… flexible position. “Love you too.”

He pulls out, tries to make himself move even though his thighs are still trembling and his mind’s searching for reason. He half-collapses next to Gal, looking at the canopy. It’s not the first time he’s said it, he just… didn’t mean to quite… He didn’t mean to. “Hm?” he says.

Then there’s a hand, strong and calloused, touching his face.

“I love you too.” Gal’s still wild-haired and flushed, and he’s smiling with that bright-eyed fondness, like this is easy.

Dorian’s dimly aware he’s making a mess, and that he should care, but those words are still startling, and so is the way they sink and settle there, steadying. “There… is that, yes.”

“Wouldn’t mind hearing that again.”

Dorian blinks. “You know, don’t you?”

Gal’s still smiling. “I do.” He leans in, and says into Dorian’s ear, “But you make it sound really good.”

Dorian turns his head and kisses Gal before he can help himself, lingering and warm. Then he pulls back and says, gesturing to the copper tub Gal keeps up here sometimes, “We should…”

Gal doesn’t even ask him if he’s staying tonight. It’s no longer a question. (Always. This is his bed as much as Gal’s, even if he does complain about its austere Marcher styling.)

“Mm.” Gal’s hand finds his and strokes briefly over his knuckles.

Dorian sighs. “You’ll have to let me sort out some water. I doubt you’ll love me when I’m this sticky. Or if I let this dry properly.” He grimaces.

Gal snorts. “I always love you. I loved you when you’d got wyvern-shit on you and you were saying… what was it… you’d let the south perish and laugh in the ruins?”

Dorian tries to keep his train of thought at that. His words are careful, a little unsteady. “I’m beginning to realise that, yes.”

“Good,” Gal says, easily.

It’s as Dorian’s melting spelled ice, warming it to dampen a cloth, that Gal says, “I meant it. You make it sound…” Gal clears his throat, and there’s a hint of embarrassment to it, but his voice is sincere when he says, “Best sound in the world.”

Dorian smiles while he’s casting, small and private. It’s too intensely felt to be anything else. And then he realises where he is, who he is, and looks over his shoulder. Lets Gal see it.

 

 

The sex is good. The love is better.


End file.
